Our site provides two approaches for customers to locate the products they're looking for: Brand and Category.
Where we're unsure if we're causing confusion for the search engines is when the left navigation filter link anchor text for these pages conflict with one another.
For example, let's say we have a Snazzy Brand Type A widget, Blue, Squared.
The nav links from a category approach could be:
Widgets > Blue > Squared > Snazzy
From the brand approach, we have:
Snazzy > Widgets > Blue > Squared
Where we have the conflict is in the instances of "Snazzy". From a category perspective, we direct customers down to the Snazzy Widgets page at /snazzy-widgets/ (as it's a filter). But from a brand perspective, we direct to the Snazzy brand page at /snazzy/. This means we have two sets of links with the anchor text of "Snazzy" that are going to two completely different pages.
Repeat this across a variety of categories, and you have many instances of "Snazzy" all pointing to different Snazzy-related pages, but not to the Snazzy brand page (/snazzy/, /snazzy-widgets/, /snazzy-whatsits/, etc).
So what's the best way to make sure we communicate the right information to the search engines, while still keeping the customer's browsing experience intact and enjoyable?
Thanks!